SUMMARY: In a world struggling with anti-immigrant sentiment, Uganda provides a rare hospitable welcome for those seeking asylum. Refugees live in settlements where they are able to run small businesses, attend mosques and children attend school. The country's support system is possible mainly because of its unilateral political structure. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Uganda.
Editor's Note: A version of this story aired on the PBS program “Religion and Ethics Weekly.”
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):In a world struggling to accommodate a record number of refugees, one country has been notably welcoming.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro has a report from Uganda. It's part of his Agents for Change series.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour): Nakivale in Southern Uganda looks like any other dusty rural African town. What's remarkable is that almost none of its 113,000 residents are Ugandan.
Ethiopia?
All of these schoolchildren and their parents are refugees.
Burundi? Rwanda? Congo?
All told, 13 nations are represented in this crowded school, their families fleeing conflicts across a wide swathe of East Africa and finding haven in what must rank as one of the world's most hospitable countries to refugees.
In Uganda, refugees are placed in settlements and not camps, and the government says there's an important difference. Camps tend to confine people, whereas, in Uganda, when refugees arrive, they are issued legal I.D.s that entitle them to move freely anywhere in the country, to find a job, start a business, put their children in school.
Refugees in rural areas are given a small plot of land to farm. Others migrate to the urban areas. Somalis are among the earlier arrivals in recent years. Their enclaves in the capital, Kampala, are well-established with small businesses and mosques, a predominantly Muslim community in a mostly Christian nation.
Mohammed Abdi runs this grocery story with his partner, Zahara Hassan.
MOHAMMED ABDI, Somali Immigrant (through translator): We have very many Ugandan customers and we are friends. I am one of the Somali elders in the community. We interact with the elders of the Ugandan community, whether leaders in this distract or region. And we are friends, and they welcome us. We're very happy. We're like one people.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And one scholar who's studied refugees in Uganda says there's reason to be happy.
ALEXANDER BETTS, Oxford University:We showed in the capital city of Uganda, Kampala, 20 percent of refugees own businesses that employ someone else. And of those they employ, 40 percent are citizens of the host country. So refugees can contribute to the host societies that they're part of.
SUMMARY: A massive HIV test-and-treat study is underway in Kenya and Uganda. Migratory men in the fishing industry there have been hit especially hard, and researchers are trying creative ways to encourage them to get tested. William Brangham reports from Mfangano Island with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for our series, “The End of AIDS?”
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Finally, as the International AIDS Conference convenes in Durban, South Africa, this week, we continue our End of AIDS series.
As we have been reporting, public health officials believe that getting the overwhelming majority of HIV-positive people tested and consistently treated is a crucial step to ending the epidemic. But that's proven a difficult goal.
But in Western Kenya, on the border with Uganda, there's a small island where researchers are finding remarkable success with even the hardest-to-reach groups.
Correspondent William Brangham and producer Jason Kane continue our series, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): It's late on a Monday night.
Fisherman Kevin Opiyo and his crew are heading out onto Lake Victoria on the very western edge of Kenya. They throw out their lines and stretch out their nets, hoping the tiny omena fish are schooling below.
Fishing these waters is long, grueling, dangerous work. It's also become one of the main pathways for the growth of the HIV epidemic in this part of Kenya.
Opiyo himself is infected.
KEVIN OPIYO, Fisherman (through translator): I'm confident that I got it through sexual intercourse and can say it was the time I was working in Remba.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Fishing crews often have to travel long distances to other islands on the lake, and into neighboring Uganda.
DR. MOSES KAMYA, Makerere University/SEARCH Co-Principal Investigator: I think there's a mentality among fishermen that life is not as important. Therefore, you can enjoy it and have as much sex as you can.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Dr. Moses Kamya is an HIV researcher who's been working with fishermen in the region for years.
DR. MOSES KAMYA: You know, fishermen tend to have a lot of disposable income, and, you know, they can buy sex very easily. And, of course, where fishermen are, there are, you know, sex workers who hang around them.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM:The fishermen live on Mfangano Island here on Lake Victoria, near the border with Uganda. The island's 25,000 residents live clustered in homes near the water, and fishing is the main industry.
Largely because of this migratory fishing, it's estimated that nearly one out of every three adults here is infected with HIV.
SUMMARY: Nearly one in five people infected with HIV globally lives in South Africa, and only half of those individuals are on treatment. But the nation has made major strides against the virus in recent years and now is aggressively moving to implement a plan to "end" the epidemic. William Brangham reports in the final installment of our series "The End of AIDS?"
SUMMARY: For gays living in Uganda, just walking outside of their homes can be dangerous. And today, long-standing prejudice has been institutionalized into law with the country’s “Anti-Homosexuality Act,” which calls for harsh sentences for gay acts. Offenders convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” face life in prison.NewsHour Weekend special correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Kampala.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL (NewsHour): For Geoffrey Ogwaro this, is a risk, just being out of his house. He is a gay activist, he lives in Uganda and that, he says, is dangerous.
GEOFFREOY OGWARO: You don’t know what’s going to happen to you next. You’re more careful, instead of living your life freely as a Ugandan you’re more cautious of the places you go to. Who you invite to your house.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Pepe Onziema is also active in the gay community in Kampala. He is extremely careful.
PEPE ONZIEMA: Many people know my face. I actually don’t go to the city because I’ve been attacked on the streets many times.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: The attacks are sometimes lethal. This man was accused of being gay, he was beaten to death by a mob.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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